Polish TV station investigated over Holocaust scholar’s claim Poles did little to help Jews in WW2

Poland’s broadcasting regulator has launched proceedings against the country’s largest private TV network, American-owned TVN, following remarks on air by a leading Holocaust scholar, Barbara Engelking, in which she suggested that Poles did little to help Jews during the war.

The comments, which came on the day Poland marked the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, have been criticised by leading politicians in the conservative ruling camp, including Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

However, the research centre that Engelking leads has defended her remarks and condemned the authorities for making “political and ideological attempts to question research”.

In an interview on Wednesday evening with TVN presenter Monika Olejnik, Engelking said that “Jews were unbelievably disappointed with Poles during the war. They knew what to expect from the Germans, [who were] the enemy…but the relationship with Poles was much more complex”.

“Poles had the potential to become allies of the Jews and one would hope that they would behave differently, that they would be neutral, kind, that they would not take advantage of the situation to such an extent and that there would not be widespread blackmailing [szmalcownictwa],” she continued.

“It seems to me that this disappointment plays a role, that Poles simply failed,” continued Engelking, who is director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, which is part of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN).

The scholar also claimed during the interview that Poles today often “falsify history” by exaggerating the extent to which during the war Poles provided help to Jews.

“Jews in the ghetto…were self-sufficient to a large extent, and would have been even more so if it were not for the [Polish] blackmailers,” she said.

“People who decided to help Jews really were heroes but there were very few of them,” added Engelking. “There was a reluctance on the Aryan side [i.e. among non-Jews outside the ghetto]. There was no atmosphere conducive to hiding Jews.”

Engelking’s remarks reignited a long-running debate in Poland over the extent to which Poles helped or harmed Jews during the German-Nazi occupation of World War Two.

The current national-conservative ruling camp has been on the other side of that debate, promoting a narrative of the war that highlights the many Poles who helped Jews during the Holocaust and emphasises that Poles themselves were also among the Nazis’ primary victims.

Following Engelking’s interview, government figures including the education minister, Przemysław Czarnek, and the prime minister, Morawiecki, condemned her remarks and TVN for airing them. The station, which is often critical of the government, has regularly clashed with the authorities.

These were “scandalous words that have nothing to do with reliable historical knowledge” and are part of an “anti-Polish narrative in some media”, wrote Morawiecki in a lengthy social media post accompanied by a photograph showing the names of Poles honoured by Israel for helping Jews during the war.

Engelking’s comments were also disputed by Karol Nawrocki, the head of the Institute for National Remembrance (IPN), Poland’s main state historical body, in a letter to the head of Warner Bros. Discovery Poland, the branch of the US media conglomerate that owns TVN.

He wrote that Engelking had made “scandalous statements unworthy of academia” and which had “omitted important elements shaping the image of [Polish-Jewish] relations, such as the help the Polish underground state [provided] to Jews fighting in the [Warsaw Ghetto] Uprising”.

“Barbara Engelking’s claims are disgraceful; they are a slap in the face to the victims of the German criminal policy of extermination: Jews and Poles, as well as their relatives, who still carry the weight of that barbaric reality in their hearts to this day,” added Nawrocki.

On Friday, Maciej Świrski, the head of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT), a state regulator, announced that he was initiating proceedings against TVN over Engelking’s interview.

“In Poland, everyone can, using freedom of speech, say any nonsense and lies,” wrote Świrski. “[But] the job of journalists is to react to lies because the press law requires them to provide reliable information. If the guest on a programme is lying, the journalist must tell viewers that it is a lie.”

“And finally, if Poles did not help Jews, the Germans would not have introduced the death penalty for helping [Jews],” added Świrski, a conservative figure who was appointed to the KRRiT by the government’s majority in parliament.

Świrski was, in his role as president of the Polish League Against Defamation (Reduta Dobrego Imienia), involved in bringing a legal case against Engelking and another leading Holocaust scholar, Jan Grabowski, over a book they published.

Meanwhile, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research declared its “great concern that we have observed, once again, representatives of the Polish government and other public officials make statements about academic findings that result from years of research and thorough examination”.

“The claim that saving Jews was a common attitude among Poles is the very obfuscation of the truth the abovementioned government officials have accused others of – an opinion, and not a fact based on historical knowledge resulting from many years of interdisciplinary research projects,” it added.

“Such a claim belittles the heroism of the Righteous [Among the Nations, who saved Jews], especially those who paid the ultimate price for their bravery and lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis,” wrote the institution in its statement.

Main image credit: Jakub Wlodek / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.